Hail Hooper, Hyperion

If the ghosts of racing’s past were at the 141st Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I), you can bet that Fred Hooper left wearing a satisfied smile. After winning the Derby in 1945 with his first Thoroughbred, Hoop, Jr., he spent more than five decades trying to catch the lightning again, building along patterns laid down by the 17th Earl of Derby. For Hooper the lightning never quite struck twice, but in American Pharoah, the legacy of Hoop, Jr., lives on—as do four generations of Hooper’s breeding for tough, honest, sound stock.

Zetta Jet, a product of Hooper’s program, gave little indication she would be the third dam of a Derby winner. When she sold for $10,000 to Florida breeder Mary Haire at the 1980 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s January mixed sale, her price reflected both a racing career that saw her unplaced in five starts and an equally undistinguished production record for her dam, Queen Zetta, herself unplaced in six starts.

What Zetta Jet did have going for her was a concentration of some of Hooper’s best breeding. Her sire, Tri Jet, was a stellar example of the durable, hard-trying horses Hooper was known for. A three-time grade II winner who made 46 starts from ages 2 through 6, Tri Jet proved to be a truly exceptional breed-to-race sire, getting 375 winners (72.4%) from 518 foals. The best of his 48 stakes winners was multiple grade I winner Copelan (out of Hooper’s hardy three-time champion Susan’s Girl), an excellent breed-to-race sire.

Part of Tri Jet’s performance as a racehorse and as a sire can be attributed to a pedigree similar to those constructed by Lord Derby. The earl frequently created pedigrees featuring the mating of an inbred mare to a sire who was an outcross to the mare’s inbreeding but had bloodlines that reinforced another part of the mare’s pedigree. Hooper’s choice of Jester as a mate for his Olympia mare Haze was an outcross for Haze’s inbreeding of 4x3 to English Triple Crown winner Gainsborough and 4x4 to St. Leger Stakes winner Swynford but introduced 5x5 crosses to both Lord Derby’s great matron Selene (a crack race mare in her own right) and the noted speed sire Ultimus. Incidentally, Gainsborough and Selene were the sire and dam of Lord Derby’s masterpiece Hyperion, who played a significant role in both Hooper’s bloodlines and those of American Pharoah.

Queen Zetta was a different proposition than Tri Jet. A daughter of Hooper’s Derby runner-up (and Preakness third) and fine sire Crozier (by My Babu—Miss Olympia, a daughter of Hooper’s foundation sire Olympia), she was produced from two-time stakes winner Miami Mood, a daughter of the Olympia horse Greek Game (one of the best juveniles of the vintage 1954 crop that included Bold Ruler, Gallant Man, and Round Table) and Hoop Mood, sired by none other than Hoop, Jr. Through Miss Olympia and Greek Game, Queen Zetta is inbred 3x3 to Olympia, as are her stakes-winning full siblings Mia Mood and Miami Sun. Another full sister, Miami Game, was grade III stakes-placed and produced four stakes winners including Contact Game (by Tri Jet) and Copelan’s Game (by Copelan).

Zetta Jet, thus, is a sister in blood to Contact Game, but, more importantly, is inbred 3x4x4 to Olympia, a very good sire and broodmare sire and a source of miler speed. While inbred mares such as this sometimes become very good producers, more commonly their daughters benefit from the strength of these genetic accumulations. This has been the case with Zetta Jet and her daughter Exclusive Rosette. While Zetta Jet was a better producer than her dam, throwing eight winners from 10 named foals, Exclusive Rosette (a restricted stakes winner by the Exclusive Native horse Ecliptical) has done better still, producing 2005 Lazaro Barrera Stakes (gr. II) winner Storm Wolf and 2006 Old Hat Stakes (gr. III) winner Misty Rosette to the cover of Stormin Fever for Brereton Jones.

Aside from the Olympia inbreeding found in her dam, Exclusive Rosette is inbred 5x5 to Olympia’s sire Heliopolis, a top son of Hyperion also bred by Lord Derby. The breeding of Exclusive Rosette’s daughter Littleprincessemma adds several more high-quality strains of Hyperion to the pile. Like Stormin Fever, Littleprincessemma’s sire Yankee Gentleman   is a son of Storm Cat, but his dam Key Phrase (by Flying Paster) may be the more important element here. Winner of the 1995 Santa Monica Handicap (gr. I), Key Phrase is inbred 5x5 to the excellent sire Alibhai, an Aga Khan-bred son of Hyperion, and is line bred 6x6x6x6x6x5 to Hyperion. Thus, while Littleprincessemma appears only mildly inbred on the surface with a 5x5 cross to Bold Ruler, her multigenerational buildup of Hyperion strains may be among the factors lifting this female line from modest success to graded stakes-producing to classic-producing in three generations.

As Littleprincessemma suffered a career-ending injury in her second start, her racing merits are debatable. Those of American Pharoah’s sire, Pioneerof the Nile, are another matter. Racing as a homebred for Ahmed Zayat’s Zayat Stables (which also bred and races American Pharoah), Pioneerof the Nile won the 2008 CashCall Futurity (gr. I) and the 2009 Santa Anita Derby (gr. I) and was second to Mine That Bird in the Kentucky Derby before a soft tissue injury suffered in July led to his retirement.

On pedigree as well as on performance, Pioneerof the Nile   was one of the top stallion prospects of his crop. His sire Empire Maker arguably had the best combination of talent and breeding among the sons of 1990 Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled, winning three grade I races including the 2002 Belmont Stakes and defeating 2002 champion 3-year-old male Funny Cide in two of their three meetings. Produced from 2002 Kentucky Broodmare of the Year Toussaud and, thus, a half brother to grade I winners Honest Lady (by Seattle Slew), Chester House (by Mr. Prospector), and Chiselling (by Woodman), Empire Maker was exported to Japan in 2011. The following January his daughter Royal Delta collected the first of her three Eclipse Awards, and since then Empire Maker has been represented by the brilliant Derby runner-up Bodemeister and the grade I-winning fillies Emollient, Grace Hall, In Lingerie, and Last Full Measure. His first Japanese-sired crop comes to the races this year.

In spite of his excellent credentials, Pioneerof the Nile entered stud at Vinery in 2010 at a relatively modest fee of $20,000, a figure partly dictated by the depressed state of the bloodstock industry at that time. The attractive pricing drew a quality book of 130 mares, and Pioneerof the Nile did the rest. Second to Dunkirk on the 2013 freshman sire list, Pioneerof the Nile led the 2014 second-crop sire list by more than $800,000 and is currently far out in front on the third-crop list. Aside from American Pharoah, Pioneerof the Nile has five other grade/group winners from his first two crops, headed by multiple grade II winner Cairo Prince. He is also the sire of multiple grade I-placed Social Inclusion. Now residing at WinStar Farm, Pioneerof the Nile is standing the 2015 season for $60,000.

Pioneerof the Nile is an outcross within five generations, but his breeding is in a sense the mirror image of Littleprincessemma’s. In his case the strongly inbred parent is his sire, Empire Maker, who is inbred 4x3 to In Reality, 5x4 to Buckpasser, and 5x5 to Rough’n Tumble and Native Dancer. In addition, Empire Maker has a fair build-up of strains of Teddy and Domino, both quite compatible with one another and with Hyperion. On the distaff side, Pioneerof the Nile’s dam Star of Goshen is technically outcrossed and is free of the inbred strains in Empire Maker’s pedigree other than for a fourth-generation cross of Native Dancer and a third generation cross to Bold Ruler but is linebred 5x6x6x6 to Hyperion, including one cross through Olympia. Thus, while American Pharoah’s pedigree only shows a 5x5 cross to Northern Dancer—an all but universal presence in modern pedigrees—the further reaches of his pedigree are rich with an accumulation of Hyperion strains, as well as complementary build-ups of Teddy and Domino.

More immediately, American Pharoah is bred along similar lines to both Bodemeister and In Lingerie, who are by Empire Maker from Storm Cat mares. This is a high-performing cross that makes good sense from a conformational and aptitudinal standpoint, as Storm Cat contributes a powerful body, long hip, and miler speed to the scope, excellent shoulder, and stamina contributed by Empire Maker. Given Pioneerof the Nile’s physical type, which is fairly similar to that of his sire, it makes sense that mares from the Storm Cat line may work well for him also, as well as mares from the lines of other sires capable of transmitting power and brilliance.

More support for this hypothesis may not be long in coming, as Littleprincessemma produced full siblings to American Pharoah in 2014 and 2015. The latter, a colt already named Irish Pharaoh, was bred by Frank and Jane Lyon’s Summer Wind Farm, which purchased Littleprincessemma for $2.1 million at the 2014 Keeneland November sale. The 2014 yearling filly is still unnamed but has been retained by Ahmed Zayat for racing, with an eye to eventual inclusion in his broodmare band.

For Zayat, winning the Kentucky Derby with a homebred son of his homebred stallion has to be sweet indeed. Nonetheless, like all other breeders, he depends on the foundations laid by those who have gone before him, and one can do a lot worse than to build on the legacies left by Fred Hooper and Lord Derby.